Archive for August, 2008

Scott 8 months old!

This week Scott turned 8 months old already. Amazing how time flies and how big he has grown over the past months. I am so happy with my little boy, it's the nicest thing in the world when I come home at night and he smiles at me and stretches his little arms in my direction to show that he wants me to hold him.Even though he is growing a lot, he is losing some of his baby fat at the same time. The reason is that he is incredibly active and probably walks hundreds of meters every day inside our...
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2008 Beijing Olympics pictures

I took hundreds of pictures during the Olympics, and I uploaded some of them to my Flickr account. A small selection you can see here already, if you want to see more photos you can go to my Olympic pictures set.The Olympic Flame during athleticsThe Water Cube at nightThe Bird's Nest at nightView from the Bird's NestThe stadiums were not full? The best part of beach volleyballInside the International Broadcasting Center on the Olympic GreenClosing Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing...
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China's tallest building opens this weekend

On Saturday the Shanghai World Financial Center will open its doors to the public. The 101-story building took a bit longer than planned to build (see also an earlier blog post of mine here), but now the building seems to be ready for its first visitors. If you want to visit China's tallest building you can go up to the so-called Sky Pavillion at 472 meters, which is located at the 100th floor. The 101st floor at 492 meters will not be open to the public.It won't be cheap though: Shanghaiist...
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Crowd control problems

The Olympics are over and as I mentioned in an earlier post I had a great time. The organization was almost flawless, but there is one thing that China can still improve on: crowd control. Just a few examples that I encountered yesterday.Early in the morning we went to watch the Olympic Marathon. We chose a spot in the last corner before the stretch to the Olympic Stadium and arrived early to secure a good view. The police already put fences up around the whole area, so we chose the best spot....
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Olympic update

I spent the past days in Beijing with my family and had a great time here. Most days I worked a couple of hours during daytime and did some sports, and later in the afternoon I went over to the city center, to the Holland Heineken House or to one of the stadiums to watch Olympic Events. So far the best event I went to was beach volleyball. Not only because of the sport itself, but especially because of the atmosphere around it. Great music and even better bikini-clad cheerleaders, the pictures...
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Partying in the Holland Heineken House

After already spending last weekend in Beijing at the Opening Ceremony, I will be back in the capital city tomorrow night for another dose of Olympics. One of the places that I will certainly frequent over the next couple of days is the Holland Heineken House (HHH). This is the center of Dutch partying (although there are also a lot of other nationalities that come just for the great atmosphere) and one of the hottest places to be at night in Beijing during the Summer Olympics. The HHH is...
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China TV

A couple of weeks ago I was in Beijing for the recording of the Dutch TV program China TV. The program uses short clips of Chinese TV programs, and I comment on them and give my views on current Chinese society.I have not seen the final program yet, but it will air Thursday night on Dutch TV. If you're in the Netherlands and are interested to learn a bit more about the real China as I experience it, tune into the VPRO right after Nova.China TVDate: Thursday, August 14, 2008Time:...
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Dutch mayor upset about Opening Ceremony

This morning I came across a Dutch story related to the Olympics that seemed to be a joke at first. But because I found it on several other international and even Dutch news sites as well, it may actually be true.What happened is that the mayor of the city of Haarlem in Holland, Mr. Schneiders, was watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony on TV and saw that one of the themes was the invention of printing by the Chinese. That made him upset, because in his opinion printing was invented by a certain...
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From the China Daily

Normally I try to avoid the China Daily as much as possible, but in Beijing it's the only local English language paper. However, during the Olympics the quality of the paper has gone up considerably and today's paper was actually quite readable. On the plane from Beijing to Shanghai this afternoon I read through most of the articles and came across some interesting or funny tidbits of information that you might not find in other newspapers. A couple of examples:During the Olympic Opening...
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Opening Ceremony Beijing 2008 Olympics

Last night I went to the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the Bird's Nest with among others Gary, courtesy of Dell computers. It was an amazing event, probably the best show I have ever seen. I am very happy that I could be part of this: I was celebrating in Beijing the night in 2001 that China was awarded the Games and now 7 years later I was at the Opening Ceremony!Getting to the Bird's Nest was a bit of a hassle. Originally we were supposed to park next to the stadium, but at...
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Off to the Beijing Olympics

Later today I will be flying to Beijing with Gary for the Olympic Games. I am quite excited about it, and I look especially forward to the Opening Ceremony tomorrow night. I will cover my Beijing activities as usual on Twitter, Friendfeed and Flickr. And possibly also on Qik, if I am able to get my iPhone to work with it (someone from Qik will meet me in Beijing to help me set it up).Saturday night I plan to go to the Holland Heineken House, traditionally THE place to party during every...
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Game.com.cn: One million unique visitors per day!

For a while I did not write about the Spil Games sites in China, and now this is already the second post in a week. Reason is that we keep on breaking all our records. On Monday game.com.cn broke through the 1 million unique visitors per day for the first time, a big milestone for the company. For people who are not familiar with internet terms, 1 million unique visitors means that 1 million different people (or to be more precise, IP addresses) have visited our site yesterday. If somebody...
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When do the Beijing Olympics start?

When do the 2008 Olympic Games start? The Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will take place this Friday, August 8 at 8:08 PM. That should be the official start of the Olympics, but apparently that's not the case in China.To my surprise the first football (soccer) matches already take place tomorrow (see the schedule here). At 5 PM Wednesday afternoon the first 3 women's preliminary matches will start, with another 3 later that evening. And on Thursday there will be 8 men's preliminaries...
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New records!

Outside China the summer months are normally not the best months for online gaming portals. But in China things are different, July and August are always the best period for Chinese entertainment sites. Last year we broke all records for Spil Games' Chinese sites during the summer and this year looks like it will be exactly the same.The reason is that a lot of people visiting our sites are students, and they have a lot more time on their hands during the summer holiday than during the rest of...
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Double fake

This weekend I noticed a smart car next to our house. At least it looked like a smart, but when I had a closer look I saw there were quite some differences. Then I also noted the brand name Toyota on both the side and back of the vehicle. I got a bit excited, was this possibly a prototype of the new Toyota iQ? Because I started my career in the automotive business and also occasionally write columns for a car magazine I still follow what's happening in the industry.Looking a bit better at the...
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